


East of the Sun, West of the Moon

by vyatka



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Major Character Undeath, russo brothers found dead in miami, was going to add more to this but my goal is accomplished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 11:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18810067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: Once upon a time, a woman did the impossible to save the world, and she died for it.The woman died, but it wasn't the end of her story.





	1. Chapter 1

Once upon a time, a woman did the impossible to save the world, and she died for it. 

The woman died. The woman died and there was no dispute about it. She threw herself into a chasm specifically so she would die. Her hair was red but it was gold at the bottom, and her blood was red and there was no gold in it at all, and one could note all sorts of things about her that are horrible to note of a dying person, that her waist was slim and her thighs were lean and her lips were full and her cheekbones might have been carved out of marble, but of course none of that matters to a dead person. What did matter was the way the light fled her eyes when she hit rock and broke like a doll. 

The woman died, but it wasn't the end of her story. 

Natasha died, and after that she started to plan. 

 ***

Natasha has killed enough people to know how it works. There's no holding on. Speaking poetically, once the soul slips its moorings, it is slipped. People who've never killed anyone wax lyrical about clinging to life, but a dying person can no more cling to life than they can change their eye color. 

Natasha plummets through icy air. 

On her way down, she takes a full breath, and it feels like her first full breath in five years. She wants to close her eyes. There's no time. 

The pain sears, but it's over almost as soon as it starts. She makes contact with the ground, all jutting rock. A shard of it goes right through her, punches into an organ; all her ribs break at once; her head splits like an egg and Natasha experiences one instant of blinding, white-hot pain before her soul tears out of her body. 

Then blackness. 

 ***

Then, not blackness. 


	2. Chapter 2

She dreams namelessly. She dreams that she is an angel, shot out of the sky in battle. She falls to earth streaking sparks, because on the inside she's made of fire. Her wings curl broken around her - now there are no wings and no battlefield of demons, only a red and roiling sea, and she's sailing across it on a tiny and very penetrable skiff. There's warm-water sharks in the sea, she knows, reaching out to skim her fingertips. The water is as warm as blood. A huge wave bucks her tiny vessel so violently she's almost thrown. 

There's a man and he's unsmiling and blue-eyed but there are lines around his eyes that tell her he has smiled before. She thinks that he has smiled for  _her_ before, because he presses a kiss to the bare inside of her wrist. 

A shark rides the next wave of the blood sea - now she's elsewhere, no blood but her own. She's bleeding, she thinks, but this blood is different. There's no wound. There's a heavy ache in her belly where internal smooth muscle has gone unused for her fourteen years of life. 

"You're not injured, child. You're a woman. It's the lifemaking blood. Well, not for you, but for other women it's the life-curse, the thing for baby-bearing. You understand? You can get pregnant now, so if you're fucking any of the men you'd better start having them spill their seed on your belly, not inside." 

(i'm not fucking anyone) 

"Good girl. Good woman, I should say. You're no child, not anymore." 

(i never was) 

"Don't be insolent." 

(yes sir) 

"Go and find one of the women. She'll patch you right up. And then it's outside for you, yes? Don't waste the morning." 

(yes sir) 

"Begone with you, Natalia Alianovna." 

(whatever it takes) 

(if it was down to me to save your life would you trust me to do it) 

_"The angels are falling. Someone has to warn them. They're falling, all of them - "_

_"I tried to stop - "_

_"He's hear, he's coming - "_

_"I didn't mean it!" and the baby is screaming, bawling -_

"Help me!" 

(i can't i have orders) 

"You can, you can, all you have to do is help, you could  _help me!"_

(i can't i'm sorry) 

"Why won't you? You could help me, you could save me, please..." 

(leather driving gloves on the steering wheel) 

"Answer me! Monster!" 

(i'm sorry you feel that way) 

"Look at me!" 

(i'm looking at you) 

"Please, if you have a shred of mercy left in your soul. You know you're doing the wrong thing...you  _don't care!_ Your commie masters took it from you. You're not human anymore! You're not a woman, you're just their machine, if there was ever any humanity in you they've crushed it under their boots! Kill me, you soulless bitch. Kill me and have done with it." 

(red in my ledger) 

(skillset i didn't care who i used it for) 

(we owe it to everyone who's not in this room) 

(Let me go.) 

 ***

She opens her eyes. 

Water laps gently at her knees, gray, not red. The only red thing in sight is her hair. No blood. No pain. Pink sky extends above her, endless and purgatorial in all directions. A sliver of white-blue sun sinks over the horizon of the sea. 

Deep in her bones, which she suspects aren't actually present, she knows that she's dead. The silence is broken only by the plink of water against her shin guards. 

Her parents were Jewish. She, however, grew up in the Red Room, which cleaved to no religion and spurned them all. She knows very little about the Jewish faith, but she knows what it has to say about hell. Namely, that there isn't one. That must be true. If there were a hell, she'd be there. Or so she used to think. Maybe she wouldn't be. Maybe her last act made up for all the killing. 

She stands up. Water sluices off her legs. 

Natasha drops her head into her hands and begins to laugh. 


End file.
